The new manual is supposed to be unveiled at an army symposium February 28, but senior leaders have begun briefing Congress on the changes, which one official said were "both evolutionary and revolutionary."

"This is the blueprint for our ability to operate in an uncertain future,' said Lieutenant Colonel Gary Kolbe, an army spokesman.

It comes a year after the army's release of a new counter-insurgency doctrine produced by General David Petraeus, now the top US commander in Iraq.

The operations manual is a broader document that shapes all army doctrine and can influence the service's organization, training, equipment, leadership and education, official said.

It has not been revamped since 2001, and officials said the new edition has been shaped by inputs from younger officers who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan and are now at the army's premier war colleges.

A key lesson was that the lack of preparedness for the aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 contributed to the rise of a bitter insurgency that still bedevils US forces.

In Iraq and Afghanistan the US military have learned that nation building is essential to long-term success, and that often only the military is capable of accomplishing those tasks in a war zone.

"We've always talked about stability operations, but this doctrine elevates it to the same level as offensive and defensive operations, which for a commander in a significant change," said Kolbe.

He said the new doctrine also has at its center "full spectrum operations," meaning that the army must be organized to engage in everything from high intensity combat to nation-building, often near simultaneously.

That is the goal for the army as a whole under the existing doctrine, Kolbe said.

But the new editions calls for making brigade size units capable of operating along the full spectrum of operations, he said.

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